


sunshine, happiness, and her mother's smile

by bucky_babe



Series: not with a bang, but with a whimper [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Coming of Age, F/M, Family Issues, First Love, Harry Potter Next Generation, I literally love this tag so much, Love, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not Beta Read, Resentment, We Die Like Men, Weasley Family Bashing (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22470616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bucky_babe/pseuds/bucky_babe
Summary: By fifth year, Lucy has a bitterness inside of her that cannot be silenced.And then Sebastian Nott traipses in with his lazy smile and wild eyes and Lucy slowly falls apart.(Or, how the one girl who never let herself come apart unravels over and over again.)
Relationships: Audrey Weasley/Percy Weasley, Lucy Weasley/Original Male Character(s), Molly Weasley II/Original Male Character(s), Percy Weasley/Oliver Wood, Teddy Lupin/Molly Weasley II
Series: not with a bang, but with a whimper [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2172615
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	sunshine, happiness, and her mother's smile

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone, this is a work I've been toying with for a while now, so I figured instead of doing some actual productive work, I'd just post this lol. Love to know what you think!
> 
> Just a note that bipolar disorder is discussed and slightly described, as well as overall maladaptive behaviors, so do what you will with this info.

Lucy detested façade, even if she knew so much of her life was one.

Lucy didn’t look like either of her parents, in particular. Her hair, an auburn tinge to a caramel sort of color, fell in curls too loose to look like her father’s ringlets, but too tight to resemble her mother’s waves. Her skin held far too many freckles to come from her mother, yet too few to be from her father. Her fair skin didn’t share her father’s pale, pasty hue, yet seemed a few shades too pale to be from her mother. Her eyes weren’t her father’s cobalt blue, nor her mother’s warm golden brown, but a mixing clash of both, like a raging storm. The only things definitive about her appearance were that she had her father’s steady hands and mother’s smile – something that would haunt her father and Uncle Charlie for the rest of their lives.

But Molly, she took after their mother. Her light caramel honey locks feel in loose beach waves, and her slightly tanned skin, devoid of freckles, emanated an eternal sort of glow that contrasted sharply with her cobalt blue eyes, their color being only feature she undoubtedly shared with Percy, perhaps the tightness of her smile being another.

Looks aside, Lucy was actually very much like her parents. Where Molly had their father’s ambition coupled with their mother’s good heart, Lucy had his tireless work ethic and her ardent curiosity. Lucy was the very best of both her parents, perhaps with the exception of her mother’s extreme depth for emotion, while not always a bad thing, and her father’s tendency to put everything upon herself.

Shamefully, Lucy always wished she was exactly like Molly. Molly was beautiful, like their Mammy. Molly was confident, like their Mammy. Molly was muggle, like their Mammy. Even in a wheelchair at eleven, paralyzed from a car accident, Molly remained unaffected and utterly perfect (as far as her own eye could see).

It wasn’t jealousy, not like regular embittered jealousy, anyway. Lucy loved Molly more than herself, and would go against anyone or anything who even looked at her strangely, muggle or magical. It was just that Molly was everything their Mammy was, and everything their Mammy was that Lucy wished she could be.

Her mother loved to break the rules, to challenge social conventions and live by nobody’s opinions, save her own. She’d start food fights with Percy in the kitchen every other morning and declare a truce by dancing to the radio in the middle of the kitchen floor, both of them covered in pancake mix, orange juice, and oatmeal. She would tear through expectations, her smile beaming the whole way through, and her father would accompany her happily, bedazzled and awestruck by the sheer force of her being. She enchanted everyone around her, and her husband and daughters were no exception.

But every trait of Audrey’s that Lucy admired, her father’s family abhorred. She was a muggle, an outsider, an insurgent. She didn’t belong, and the Weasley’s made sure that she knew it, even if she didn’t particularly care much. If Audrey gave her daughters anything, it was her intangible sort of dignity that no one could ever hope to take away from them. Lucy would turn nine before Molly would tell her why they hated their Mammy so much. _Mammy forgave Daddy for the mistakes he made, Luce. Nanna Weasley and the rest of them never could. They think Daddy should’ve died in the war, instead of Uncle Fred._ Lucy never forgot those words.

When Lucy is nearly seven, her family stops talking to her father’s family, or most of them, anyway. Uncle Charlie still visits once a week, sometimes with Julian and Ivy if he has them, and Aunt Angelina and Uncle George bring Freddie and Roxanne over to play, if a bit infrequently. It happens abruptly during one dinner, when the four of them leave the Burrow suddenly, but not before Audrey tells each one of the Weasleys off.

They go to Mammy’s family for Sunday dinners instead, and Lucy finds that she likes her muggle cousins exponentially more than her magical ones, and that this Gran spares her much more than a second glance. Even at eight (Molly’s in her wheelchair by then. A drunk muggle driver.), Lucy knows that her Mammy’s family is just as sad as Daddy’s. It isn’t until she’s nearly eleven when Gran finally tells her about her Grandad and the youngest twins, her Uncle Eric and Aunt Lucy, who died in the car crash that her mother survived. But Lucy can see all the difference between the Nolans and the Weasleys in both her grandmothers’ eyes. Gran looks at her with love and gratitude, like she’s a second chance. Nanna Weasley looks at her with regret and bitterness, like she’s a mistake.

Lucy’s been able to see thestrals since she watched her mother die from cancer in a muggle hospital bed at ten years old after eighteen months of fighting. She holds Molly as she cries; she makes Percy toast since he can’t bear to get out of bed for breakfast; she calls her Gran with a shaky voice to tell her that Audrey’s gone. They all get hit hard, but where Percy and Molly breakdown, Lucy is so focused on trying to keep everyone together like her Mammy did to fall apart. She cries in the dead of night, when both Percy and Molly are asleep and the only person who can hear her sobs is her mother.

The wake and funeral are both somber, overcrowded affairs. Everyone in their lives, save Percy’s family, _adored_ Audrey. Only Uncle Charlie, Julian, Ivy, Uncle George, Aunt Angelina, Freddie, and Roxanne bother attending the funeral, and a part of Lucy will hold it against the lot of them who didn’t for the rest of her life. Her father is a mess, losing the one person who made him feel whole, who made him feel like it was okay to be himself. Their family will never be the same, and there is nothing Lucy can do about it.

Lucy doesn’t want to leave for Hogwarts at first. Their loss is still too fresh, too painful, even after seven months. She doesn’t want to see the family that abandoned her father, the family that left him alone when he lost the one person who knew and loved him for everything he was and everything he did. She still cries at night, and she’s confident Percy does too. Lucy tells her Gran, the one person outside her immediate family she’s absolutely sure she can trust, and Gran gives her the one bit of advice that she can never quite forget. _You can’t fix everything, Lucy dear. Sometimes things, and sometimes people, need to mend themselves. Of course, we can try, but we need to know when it’s time to step in and when it’s time to step away._

Lucy can see that whenever she smiles her father frowns, and whenever she mentions something related to magic Molly wrinkles her nose in distaste. Lucy is a reminder of her mother in the simplest, most subtle ways, and a reminder of all those who berated her in the loudest, most obnoxious ones. By the end of August, Lucy is almost happy to be leaving a place where all she seems to do is remind people of the pain that broke them.

Her father takes her to the train station and sheds a tear or three. He hugs her so tightly and whispers all the sort of apologies his family could never give him, about blame that was never hers that she took on anyway. Percy takes her cheek in his hand and smiles, tears still fresh in his eyes, and says she looks so much like her mother when she smiles. Lucy practically floats away after promises to write with the knowledge that she won’t lose her father to the same pain that took the rest of his family away from him.

But Percy’s blind loyalty, love, and desire for the Weasleys and their approval doesn’t pass to Lucy, so she is more than happy to avoid her Weasley and Potter cousins by finding the very last compartment and running into Amelia Dursley and Rebecca Maccabee, the two girls who would become her closest friends.

Her and Amelia are birds of a feather; they’re both daughters of men who long for a forgiveness that, while deserved, will never truly be given. Rebecca is the sort of firecracker that can wrestle anybody out of their shells, and so their dynamic works wonderfully and the train ride never goes as quickly. After a rather heated debate with the Sorting Hat of whether to be placed in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, Lucy finally gets what she wants and sits with the other students in yellow robes. It’s a small miracle that both Amelia and Rebecca do as well.

Lucy’s always been observant, so she notices the stares. Sometimes its whispers and gossip about her surname and how she doesn’t deserve it. Other times its harsh eyes and even harsher words from her cousins’ mates, and other times it’s her cousins themselves. But Lucy, in the very same way her mother did, doesn’t care about what any of them have to say. She’ll be true to herself regardless, just as her mother was, and the lot of them can fuck off. She learned swear words well before then, but now she finally has good reason to use them. She doesn’t mention any of this to her father in her letters; he doesn’t need any more reason to resent his family (as if he even _would_ ). He has enough to last a lifetime, anyway.

Lucy discovers poetry, and it’s as if everything she’s felt but can’t explain pours out of her quill and onto her parchment in waves. All of the despair, the love, the frustration just floods out of her. She drafts stories too, and cannot help but write anything and everything down. She writes Percy and Molly and Gran often, and while writing letters and communication are nice, she never feels quite as safe as when she’s writing a poem.

She’s intelligent too, much to Rose’s simmering rage. She remembers things uncannily and goes above and beyond in everything she’s assigned because, unlike Rose, who works hard for the recognition, or Albus, who works because _that’s just what’s done_ , Lucy does it because she’s interested. She feels removed from the magical world, even now, and from its wonders. At least she can learn a bit more about where she’s supposed to have come from.

She likes the challenge and the mystery that comes along with something unknown, too, and Lucy can see the wrinkled tearstain on a letter from her father telling her how truly proud he is. And she didn’t even mention that she’s top of her class. He was proud because she figured out how to weasel her way into the Restricted Section without getting caught. He’s trying to be a bit more like her mother in that respect, anyway.

Flying is something she quite enjoys, too. Even though she only has a vague recollection of them from the Weasley days (she never _was_ allowed to play), brooms are fascinating specimens that Lucy becomes entranced by. She nicks one out of the shed most nights and flies until she can hardly breathe anymore. On her Christmas holidays, Lucy pleads for her father to buy one, and Lucy is so excited to see a fancy new broomstick underneath their Christmas tree she nearly flies it up the stairs. She continues those night flights around the school grounds up until the night before she graduates.

When first year comes to an end, and she swears to her friends that she’ll write, Lucy returns to a father who welcomes her smile and a sister who has more friends than she knows what do to with. Molly is naturally lovable, so muggle school, even in the wheelchair, proves no obstacle for her (not that she shows). Yet, just as reliable as Molly has always been, the two fall into their old routine like it never stopped. They spend time together, play together, laugh together. Molly teaches Lucy how to cook and Lucy finally convinces Molly to share a ride on a broom after she’s fashioned a seat for it. They eat dinner at Gran’s house and, just like that, the Weasleys and all of their drama and tragedy seem to be forgotten once more.

But it’s the summer after her third year in which the safe haven that all of their father’s pain inadvertently built begins to crumble. Percy’s one fatal fault is his family, and only speaking with Uncle Charlie, and Uncle George on occasion, hasn’t been enough. Somehow, he mends fences enough to warrant an overdue appearance at the Burrow for dinner. Molly vehemently denies any participation, and Lucy wants so badly to tell them all to go to hell, but she wants Percy to be happy more, so she relents. The dinner is something awkward and tense and passive aggressive but the way her father lights up when he hugs his father and kisses his mother makes it all worth it. But, just because Percy forgives so easily and so blindly doesn’t mean Lucy will, and she will resent the way they have emotionally manipulated her father forever. (Forever doesn’t seem all that long when she’s thirteen, anyway.)

Yet, otherwise, life continues on, with the exception of scattered Weasley dinners and other functions she, as the _magical_ child, cannot skip out on. Molly makes her stance very clear and Percy doesn’t push because, as much as Percy wants Molly to come around, he understands. He _knows_ what they’re doing to him, of which that much Lucy is sure of, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that they’re killing him because they’re his family. Lucy is both comforted and a bit unsettled by the fact that her father would undergo such suffering for his blood. It is a sentiment which she promises to live by, in terms of her mother’s side, anyway.

It’s also the summer after her third year when Teddy Lupin begins dropping by much more than could be considered normal. He’s four years older than Molly, and eight years older than Lucy, with blue hair and these murky grey brown eyes that seem to light up whenever they land on her older sister. He begins to come by just to pick up papers from Percy meant for the Auror’s Office where he’s working, but quick stops once a week turn into hour long visits after work and before Lucy can even blink he and Molly are off going to cafes and movies and dinner and sports matches.

Molly seems to be happy in a way Lucy has never really seen her be before. She has this almost constant little grin on her face and she suddenly doesn’t seem so resentful of magic and all the pain it’s caused them anymore. She even comes to the Burrow for Sunday dinner once, holding Teddy’s hand, his hair a nearly sickening vibrant blue, and bewitching everyone with her charisma like she always does. Lucy is so glad for her sister’s happiness that she almost doesn’t notice Victorie sit in the corner with her arms folded and a beautiful scowl on her face.

But just like everything with Molly, it goes infinitely worse than what she deserves. A few days after the dinner Lucy finds Molly crying bitterly into her pillow. _He cheated on me, Luce. With Victorie, no less. I should’ve known it would happen, I mean, look at me compared to her! I shouldn’t have gotten so attached so quickly. I’m so stupid!_ That is not the first time that Lucy laments at how blind her sister is to her own beauty, but it is the first time Molly seems so utterly and visibly distraught about it. Molly’s walls have come crumbling down and it is the first time Lucy sees just how strong Molly actually is. So, Lucy does what she can and hugs her and tells her how amazing she is and promises to jinx Teddy halfway to hell at the next Burrow supper. Molly never does go to another one of those, though.

By fifth year, Lucy has a bitterness inside of her that cannot be silenced. She resents her father’s family for their apathy, for their manipulation. She resents the wizarding world for casting out her mother and sister as pariahs because they couldn’t wave a magic wand. She resents Teddy, and his stupid, paler hair, who becomes the new DADA teacher and jinxes him every time she has the chance, serving more than her fair share of detentions. She begins to resent anything and everything unfair in the world and writing can only help so much.

It will be five years in February, five years since cancer took the mother who loved her so fiercely, who loved her so completely. A small part of Lucy is afraid she can never find another person to love as her completely as her mother did. So she tries to busy herself instead of thinking of her worst fear. She finally tries out for the house Quidditch team and throws herself into everything she can. She flies, cries, and writes more, but none of that seems to help much.

And then Sebastian Nott traipses in with his lazy smile and wild eyes and Lucy slowly falls apart.

He’s a seventh year Slytherin, the captain of the Quidditch team, and one of Amelia’s older brother’s mates. He’s got this unkempt, wild sort of dark chocolate hair that he runs his hand through when he thinks and this ever-present grin that makes her stomach flip.

But the things that get her most are his eyes. His beautiful, enigmatic dark green eyes with gold spurts that pierce into the very being of her soul. She feels so vulnerable, so completely open to him that it unsettles her. Their first official meeting is at one of James’s parties, and ironically enough, a party neither of them were supposed to be at. Their second meeting takes place in the sky at two in the morning, when Lucy realizes that she isn’t the only one who flies at night to clear their head.

He’s also compulsive, arrogant, and daft, and the fury she feels when she’s arguing with him seems to be the best cure for forgetting, strangely enough. She argues with and yells at him every day after classes when she agrees to help him with Charms, something she’s been wickedly good at since first year. And his talent for Quidditch does _not_ extend into wand work. (He offers her pointers in Astronomy, though, and it’s soothing, listening to legends about the constellations.) They argue about anything and everything and the thrill she gets when she challenges him is enough to make her forget her own name.

The first of their many ridiculous arguments is about the house colors, and Bash just gives her bullshit about how Hufflepuff is the house for leftovers, and how even their colors were probably the last ones left. _Slytherin has the colors of royalty, the color of emeralds, for Merlin’s sake. What does Hufflepuff yellow look like?_ And Lucy defiantly replies that _it’s the color of amber and sunshine and happiness, something you wouldn’t know much about, would you, you belligerent dingus?_ He laughs and she laughs and they do it all over again. She finds that she doesn’t mind his laugh.

He paints as well, much to her surprise. It seems so contradictory to her that a stocky lad the size of Nott, who’s captain of the Quidditch team, no less, can paint so delicately with such a fine brush. He’s even fashioned an abandoned classroom in one of the forgotten corridors in the dungeons into a sort of art studio. He paints and draws and takes Lucy there more than a couple of times, and for the first time in a long time she’s at a loss for words. He seems a bit too smug about it, too.

And then he kisses her, out of attraction or frustration or confusion she isn’t completely sure, but it is enough to completely obliterate every coherent thought in her head that they do it again and again and again until she kisses him out of complete admiration without a trace of tempting intrigue.

Bash makes Lucy feel like she could be everything she every wanted to be. He kisses her and protects her and challenges her and listens to her and laughs at her in the sort of way that makes Lucy want to _believe_ , that makes her want to open up her heart and let one more person in.

She can see a future with him, a future loving him. Even if she’s never been in a relationship this serious before, she knows this feeling is different. She knows this feeling is right. Although she never forgets the way Molly cried when her heart broke for the first time, the way Bash looks at her with a smile on his face, like she’s the world, is enough to convince her that he feels the same way.

Christmas holidays only serve to strengthen her hopes. He charms all of her mother’s family, her Gran included. She doesn’t dare invite him to those two Weasley gatherings she’s required to go to. But they take walks each evening, full of holding hands, teasing touches and echoing laughs, and always end their nights in front of Lucy’s fireplace.

She’s not naïve; she knows the reason he doesn’t stay over, or mention anything about his family while they’re together. They don’t know he’s here, and they probably don’t know she even exists, this half-blooded Weasley, daughter of an Irish muggle. But these nights, when it’s just them and the silent snow, she still can’t help but _hope_.

She tells him things, things she could never even say aloud to Molly. She whispers confessions against his skin, breathes out thoughts in the silence they share together. Her mother, her family, her friends. He tells her things as well, about his family and their status, his eldest sister and her depression and the muggle she loved before, his dreams that his parents will never let him have. No secret is safe when she’s with him, and it terrifies her. She’s never been this open, this exposed and vulnerable before, and every time she tells herself that she’ll keep the rest of it closed up, she gets lost in the fire behind his eyes and prays to God that their relationship is as real as she thinks it is.

For a while, things between them are utterly perfect. He walks her to class with his hand entwined with her own, smirking whenever she does something embarrassing, that he apparently perceives as indescribably adorable. She meets all of his friends and wears his jersey in Slytherin’s match against Ravenclaw, and he does the same for her against Gryffindor. They study and snog in the library, and eat together, but not too often. It’s everything she believes a relationship should be: growing with and discovering another person while having the room to grow with and discover herself.

The first time she becomes completely aware of how hopelessly in love she is comes when they get off the train, coming back from winter holidays. He’s poking fun at her again when his hand comes to her face, his fingers resting delicately along her cheekbone. _You know, as loony as you are, Lucy Weasley, I wouldn’t have you any other way_. The kiss he gives her seems to be a promise of a future that she can’t help but yearn for.

In early-February, just before her mother’s anniversary, Lucy plans to tell him she’s in love with him. The moment before Lucy opens her heart completely, he shatters it to pieces. He’s a pureblood and he _can’t just keep pretending anymore_. His parents have arranged an engagement for him. They’ve only been seeing each other for a few months, anyway. He can’t delay the inevitable, and she can’t expect him to be able to. She hates how he barely even meets her gaze.

So, Lucy does what Lucy does best, and acts as though it doesn’t bother her, as though she can withstand anything and everything. She agrees quietly and goes to hide in the kitchens to cry her eyes out. Perhaps if she shoves the pain deep enough, if she smoothers it for long enough, it’ll just go away. She realizes now that perhaps she’s more Weasley than she’d care to admit.

Her mother’s anniversary comes on a bleak day, just after a horrendous Valentine’s Day, that freezes Lucy to the bone. She gets special permission to leave (like every year), special permission to visit her mother who’s been dead for the past five years, the woman she so wished to become. Lucy hugs a weeping Molly tightly as she attempts to come to terms with the very real probability that no one will ever love her as completely as she’d hoped. She leaves blue daisies in front of the tombstone and pretends not to notice Uncle Charlie lurking behind a nearby tree. It’s a day of mourning for all of them; she lets him have what little peace he can get.

Lucy avoids Bash every chance she can, and vehemently denies it when Amelia and Rebecca catch him staring at her. _He_ dumped _her_ ; why would he stare at her? He keeps Trisha Rosier tragically close, and it hurts her heart to even think about seeing them together. She’s the pureblooded Slytherin he’d probably be officially engaged to by the time the term is finished. She should get used to seeing them together, but the Weasley in her has always been good about prolonging suffering and dealing with it poorly.

She catches Bash and Trisha together one time in the library after hours, too close for comfort, his eyes don’t dare to meet her own, and she can barely keep the tears at bay before collapsing in the kitchen into a heap of despair. She is _definitely_ more Weasley than she’d ever admit to herself.

She’s roaming the castle one night, a new sort of adventuring she’s taken up in an effort to avoid running into Bash on his broom outside, when she finds James on the top of the Astronomy Tower, a bottle of firewhiskey in his hands and a blank look on his face that scares her. He’s drunk and sad and hopeless and she realizes suddenly and all at once why he’s up there. She can’t help but think of how wrong it is, for someone as confident and popular and happy as James to be here, one step away from ending it all.

She talks him down, telling him that sometimes the worst things happen to even the best people. She tells him that it gets better, and that she knows she has no real right to say it but she’s seen it with Molly and she knows it’s true. She tells him about Bash and how much it hurts and how the hurt reminds her she’s human. When he takes steps toward her, she rushes to him and hugs him tightly so she knows he’s real, so she’s sure he’s alive. He makes it to the steps before passing out and she has him floating into the Hospital Wing three and a half minutes later, chest heaving and tears threatening to stream down her face. She doesn’t leave for nearly two and a half days and no one tries to make her.

She sees her Aunt Ginny for the first time in what feels like ages and watches her fall apart at the foot of James’s cot. When James wakes up, Lucy is squeezing his hand while Freddie watches from beside her and Aunt Ginny stands distraught in the corner. Ginny wipes away her tears and stands a bit straighter and looks a bit braver than Lucy’s ever seen her before. James is whisked away from school and dropped somewhere in France, but Lucy promises to write him. Her first letter flies from Hogwarts just two days later.

With James away, Gryffindor crumbles and her Quidditch team ends up playing Slytherin in the finals, ending when she takes a nasty bludger to the side three and a half hours in meant for their Seeker (and Captain) Silas Jones to ensure that her team wins, plummeting down to the pitch below. She wakes up in the too familiar Hospital Wing, her eyesight frustratingly fuzzy, surrounded by concerned teammates and a shouting Bash demanding to see her. When Silas asks if he can be let in, Lucy doesn’t bother hiding tears when she tells him not to let Bash Nott anywhere _near_ her.

The remainder of Lucy’s year is spent writing letters, poetry, and avoiding Bash. She eats in the kitchens instead of the Great Hall and finds a new hiding spot in the library he’d never think of, a new spot neither he nor Trisha could ever hope to find. Her friends keep her safe and as happy as they can manage. She watches Teddy watch her with a glint of what resembles guilt, regret, and frightening understanding in his eyes and returns his gaze with a cool, stony one of her own. She knows now, how Molly felt, and she can’t for the life of her understand how Molly survived, how Molly healed. But, if there’s one thing her older sister has always been, it’s a survivor.

She watches his graduation, in part because Freddie and Dom are graduating so she has to. She doesn’t let herself acknowledge any other reason. James doesn’t make it back for graduation.

His eyes lock with hers when they call Sebastian Baltazar Nott up to the podium, and her father squeezes her hand in such a way that tells her he knows exactly what transpired between them, exactly how deep her feelings ran. Bash met her father over the Christmas holidays, shook his hand, laughed at his awkward jokes. When Lucy meets Percy’s gaze, he wraps his other arm around her in a hug and his silence speaks volumes. Not for the first time, Lucy is impossibly thankful to have Percy Weasley as her father.

Freddie is one of her few Weasley cousins who has always been decent toward her, save Roxanne, Julian, and Ivy, and Lucy is glad when his habitually suave demeanor fades to black whenever Amelia enters the room. He played the part of a Weasley well, though, with all of his Gryffindor arrogance and flirtatious bravado beside James.

Amelia, though, Amelia holds a quiet sort of confidence and unexpected understanding that make her the perfect fit for him, a boy desperately trying to be like a man he’s never even met. She watches Freddie’s eyes meet Amelia’s, who had to be there for her own brother’s graduation, and smile. The smile Amelia gives back proves to Lucy that, sometimes, it does all end up being worth it.

She aces her OWLs, because if Lucy is one thing it’s a genius. In terms of school, anyway, and she tries to pick up the pieces of herself that Bash shattered. She reads his newly-sent letters and burns them without replying. She tells herself that she doesn’t care if he’s _changed_ , if he’s refused to be married to whoever his parents want to choose for him, the cruel smirk of Trisha Rosier burned into her mind. His proclamations of love and affection fall on covered ears, mostly because Lucy’s heart couldn’t stand to take another beating. She writes letters to James instead.

Bash shows up at their house one day, randomly during the summer, while her father’s at work. He hugs her, holds her, kisses her, tells her that she’s all he’s ever wanted and that he hasn’t felt like this for anyone ever before. He says all the words Lucy’s ever wanted to hear and she can’t help but wish that she knew they were true.

She smiles at him, opens what remains of her heart just the slightest bit, and tells him everything she feels. She tells him how she is too broken, her wounds are too raw, that she has to fix her heart before she could even bear the thought of loving again. His smile is broken as he agrees, but he whispers something to her, with his lips against the top of her ear, his face buried in her hair, that she will never forget. _You take all the time in the world, Lu. You’re worth waiting for. You’re worth fighting for. You’re worth the world. I love you, and I’_ _ll prove it._

Molly meets someone new. She has her own flat in London now, sharing with some of her muggle mates. Lucy visits a lot that summer, and that’s when she starts hearing Xavier’s name. This love isn’t the turbulent sort of affair she had with Teddy, all exotic magic and shining charm and allure. This is simpler, something less ostentatious and a deeper sort of genuine. They talk about anything and everything and Lucy can see the love in Molly’s eyes when she says so. When Molly says _it’s different this time_ , Lucy believes her. When she finally meets this Xavier, a tall strapping lad who looks at Molly as if she’s the world when he leans down to kiss her cheek, Lucy can tell that this happiness will serve Molly much better than any sort of happiness with Teddy ever could have.

She’s supposed she’s always known, in a way, about how Uncle Charlie and her mother weren’t just connected by her father. She watched how Charlie always used to smile at Audrey, glance at her when he thought no one could see. Her mother would look at him too, her eyes holding a sort of sadness Lucy could never quite decipher. She remembered how devastated he was at the funeral, and how he couldn’t look at Lucy without seeing Audrey’s smile.

Their interactions only begin to make sense almost a decade later, when she’s attending Alessia Rowle’s funeral. She was Julian and Ivy’s Mum, and died of a heart condition that Ivy refuses to get tested for. She and Charlie were never in love, not the way her own parents were, but Lucy knew they were closer friends than most. She finds Charlie at the reception’s bar after the service, tears wetting his eyes and a glass in his hand. She holds him as he cries, his drunken, quiet confessions searing into her skull: _First Tonks, then Aud, and now Lessia. Why do all the women I love end up dead? What’s_ _wrong with me, Lucy-Goosey?_

She apparates him to his apartment (she doesn’t have her license yet, but Charlie’s never been one to judge) and goes home to find her father already there, waiting patiently at the kitchen table. The words spill out of her mouth before she can even think: _Was Uncle Charlie in love with Mammy?_ Her Da tenses up a bit, and when his eyes met hers, she knows that it’s true. He asks her to sit, and tells her about how when he first met her mother, she was being introduced as Charlie’s “ _lady-friend_ ”.

They met in the muggle hospital, when her Mam was getting discharged from the car accident that took away half her family. Charlie was visiting one of his Romanian friends who got caught in a rather serious snafu with a muggle ladder. _The first time your mother and I spoke was after a dinner, actually, when Charlie introduced her. She stood up for me when no one else would. It was history after that, I suppose_ , Percy recounted, his voice shrinking into a hoarse whisper by the end. She gives her Da a bone-crushing hug and he whispers something into her hair that sends tears streaking down her face. _She loved fearlessly, you know, and that’s why it always felt so complete. I hope that’s one gift you can get from her, love_.

Sixth year is a happier year for everyone around her. Molly loves her job and excels fantastically at it. Amelia writes Freddie and visits him every Hogsmeade weekend. Rebecca is named Quidditch captain, and recruiters from every major team on the continent are scouting her. And, while not necessarily a happy thing, Julian and Ivy transfer for their seventh year, but at least she finally has family on her Weasley side who understand just how hard it is. Julian and Ivy are first known around school as _those pureblood Weasley twins from France_ , and if it wasn’t for their mother’s death that past summer, Lucy is quite confident they never would have left Beauxbatons. Julian becomes a Slytherin and Ivy gets sorted into Ravenclaw, and just like Lucy, they are relieved to be away from Gryffindor. Lucy still gets letters from Bash, and while she still doesn’t write back, she doesn’t burn them. Her life is good, and she’s got no significant complaints, but there’s just _something_ missing.

And then she meets Alistair McWillis, and there’s just _something_ about him. He’s a Slytherin too, one of Julian’s acquaintances, and she’s starting to think that maybe she has a type, but he’s just so dark and mysterious and perhaps it’s her curiosity that pulls her close. He doesn’t have the same fire behind his eyes that Bash had, but the way he smirks at her makes her feel powerful in all the ways she’s never been. He doesn’t hide his attraction to her, with his _gorgeous as always, Weasley_ , and the glances he gives her makes power buzz through veins like lightning. It’s nice, to feel beautiful, to feel wanted.

For the first time, she realizes that she’s truly lonely. Everybody has someone, save herself. Molly has Xavier and all her muggle friends. Amelia has Freddie and her older brother, Nate. Rebecca has Quidditch and her string of admirers. Julian has Ivy and Ivy has Julian and everyone has someone or something but her. She _wants_ someone. She wants someone to want _her_. And Alistair certainly does.

And just before she plans on making a move, on throwing all her caution to the wind, a different sort of letter arrives from Bash. She almost doesn’t open it, but she doesn’t regret it when she does. It’s pages long, pages and pages of how lost and hurt he is, of how he finally broke off all ties with his parents and how he hates the job they forced him into.

He’s going to play Quidditch and paint and draw and do what he loves. He already secured a spot on the Wimbourne Wasps reserves and begs her to come to a match. He attaches a sketch of her, one he must’ve made during one of their Charms sessions over a year ago, with her smile so bright it’s the first time she can ever see just how _much_ she resembles like her mother and finishes it off by saying that _you’re my yellow, Luce, my sunshine, my happiness… you’re everything_.

He opened up the way they used to, all the ugly and unfortunate secrets they used to share before everything ended. She forgets Alistair entirely and lunges for a quill and parchment. Power and love are far from the same thing, after all.

Her letter is nearly as long as his – she skips her entire day of classes to finish it – and she tells him everything. She tells him about the little things going on in her life and her feelings and her hopes and her dreams and her fears. His honesty moved her in a way his previous words didn’t. He is sad and desperate and the person he turns to is her, and that is the sort of convincing she needed. She writes everything all at once and sends it before she can even think to regret it. That very same night, an owl comes to supper and they are set to meet in Hogsmeade the next day.

The first thing she does when she sees him is hug him, and it’s as if no time has passed at all. She’s finally learned to let go and he’s finally learned to fight. He tells her about his family and how his parents want nothing to do with him and how his older siblings really want to meet her. He sounds so hopeful and so set on a future with her that Lucy cannot help but be caught up in the excitement. She’s young and she’s in love and she’s happy, and she’s with a man who will give up anything to be with her.

The remainder of sixth year passes in a whirlwind of love notes, letters, and utter hope for the future. James sounds better in each letter he sends, and it seems as though he’ll be released by the summer. She meets Bash every weekend she can and spends the rest of the time ignoring Rose’s sneers and Lily’s muttered hexes (at her _and_ Malfoy, though she can understand the latter) and Teddy’s curious glances. She sends him her poetry and he sends her sketches, and he gives her the sort of self-assurance she’s never had before.

And when summer arrives, it comes along with Molly’s engagement, and Lucy is glad that her sister is finally getting the sort of happiness she deserves. When she asks Lucy to be her maid of honor, she nearly cries. The first time she sees James again is on the Quidditch pitch when he starts for the Appleby Arrow’s and ends up slaughtering Bash’s Wasps (his second game after being pulled up from the reserves), but she can’t even try to feel disappointed. She can’t help but hope that James is becoming the person he was always meant to be, the person he was never able to be with a family like theirs. It seems that all of the tattered pieces of her family are finally beginning to mend together.

Her father also chooses this summer to reconnect with Oliver Wood, a household name in English Quidditch who just so happens to be her Da’s mate from Hogwarts. Everything about Oliver Wood seems to remind Lucy of concrete. He seeps into the cracks of their family and reinforces it quickly, eating dinners with them once or twice a week, coming over to watch the telly or sit out on the porch with a their father and a couple beers. He asks her questions about her hopes for the future and seems genuinely interested in her answer. It’s all entirely new and not entirely unwelcomed.

Lucy could see her father fading, becoming more and more resigned to his state of isolation. He has mates from work and Charlie and George, but he never seems to have had anyone as close as Oliver. Oliver’s got three kids and an ex-wife that he doesn’t get to see all that often, and Lucy thinks it’s good for her father to have a friend who understands that being alone doesn’t have to mean being lonely. But, of course, Lucy needs Molly to spell things out for her.

_They aren’t_ _just_ _friends, Luce_ , Molly laughs, her face confirming that the entire notion was utterly ridiculous. _Wow, you honestly don’t see it, do you? Jesus, Luce, they’re_ _together. Maybe not in every sense of the word, because Da is painfully awkward in just about everything he does, but the connection is there. Can’t you see it?_ And once Molly asks, Lucy realizes suddenly that she _can_ ; she can completely see it. Every little smile that Oliver coaxes out of Percy during dinner and each glance they share out on the porch reminds Lucy of the days her parents would spend dancing to the radio.

The idea of her father finding anyone else to spend the rest of his life with seemed completely improbable, and she’d always expected to despise anyone who attempted to replace their mother. But Oliver isn’t a replacement; he’s an addition.

Her seventh year passes so alarmingly fast Lucy feels an overwhelming sense of dread. Seven years at Hogwarts, and there’s so many things she hasn’t done. The day before graduation, at the last supper Lucy will ever attend as a student, she pulls the largest prank anyone there has ever witnessed, and it causes more than half the hall, including Teddy Lupin, to sprout antlers and the other half to dance and itch uncontrollably. The best part of the entire ordeal is that Albus ends up being blamed for it. Being the outcast in a family notorious for pranksters has never played so well in her favor before.

Molly agrees to come to her graduation, and Lucy can’t bother to hide her beaming smile when she walks up to the podium, staring down at everyone who cares about her. She accepts her diploma with grace and locks gazes with Bash, and she just knows that this is how it’s supposed to be. James grins a bit too, and she finds it hard to believe she nearly hated him two short years ago.

After the ceremony, Teddy approaches and seems to freeze when he sees Xavier’s hand on Molly’s shoulder and a ring on her finger. Xavier shakes his hand welcomingly and smiles, and Lucy never thought she’d like to see Teddy and Molly near each other again, but this is the best possible scenario. Victorie slithers up against Teddy’s chest and puts on a disgustingly charming act. She flirts and laughs and Xavier doesn’t take part in any of it, and he happily invites the two to their wedding this summer that Victorie jumps on attending.

There isn’t much time to work out the details though, because James gets in a _literal_ fistfight with Harry (she’s never really called him uncle, and with the divorce, she’s thankful for it). With all the drama, Lucy doesn’t think about Teddy or Victorie again, until she hears through secondhand gossip and a trashy magazine that they get engaged just two weeks later.

A large portion of her final summer before adulthood is spent in Bash’s studio apartment, posing for his sketches and sculptures and paintings. She still isn’t quite sure what she even wants to do, and Bash proves an effective distraction. Percy doesn’t push, either, but he does prod her gently to at least find _something_ to occupy her time with. She’s got all the grades, she’s got all the prospects, and all she has to do is use them. James mentions the possibility of Quidditch one day when they’re out for lunch, but Lucy can’t quite see herself on a broom the rest of her life. But then again, to be quite honest, Lucy can’t see herself doing _anything_ in particular for the rest of her life.

Molly’s wedding is on a surprisingly warm, sunny day, right beside a lake house Xavier and his family own. Lucy’s dress is a pale blue with a fitted top that flows out until it cuts off just above the knee. Molly looks stunning, with all silk and lace and smiles. She looks like their mother in their parent’s wedding photo, so extraordinarily happy.

Percy pushes her down the aisle with tears in his eyes, and he hugs her so tightly Lucy isn’t sure he’ll ever let go. She watches Molly and Xavier say their vows and has the perfect view of seeing just how much Xavier actually means them. She also has a perfect view of Teddy and Victorie, regret evident on his face as her manicured fingers keep a desperate grip on his forearm, her glittering ring resembling a shackle. Lucy doesn’t see Molly look over once.

The reception is smashing, or so she’s told. Lucy, in a haze of indecision and happiness, gets wonderfully and horribly drunk. She blacks out right before the wedding speech she was supposed to give, because Molly was so adamant that they have the best man _and_ maid of honor speak, and she wakes up along the shore of the lake with Bash by her side and a blanket covering both of them. He just gives her a dopey smile, something shining in those burning eyes, and puts his hand to her cheek saying _you’re my yellow, too, you know. My sunshine. My happiness. Always_. She kisses the life out of him after that, their horrible breath be damned.

If her Gran is to be believed, she ends up giving a kickass speech, belting some song off key with an equally inebriated Lily and apparently spends a good portion of the evening dancing embarrassingly with Freddie, laughing and smiling stupidly at Bash, hugging Oliver, Ivy, and Roxanne, all while chatting animatedly with a woman who turns out to be Xavier’s aunt, and also a senior editor of a muggle paper called the Daily Telegraph. Apparently she’d been taken by Lucy even after the alcohol wore off, and insisted that she’d come and work for her paper. _The world needs a bit more of your charm, Lucy Weasley_ , she smiled, and Lucy couldn’t resist accepting. It seems Lucy’s found something to do besides pose for Sebastian’s sketches; for now, anyway.

Molly and Xavier are still on their honeymoon when Lucy begins as a writer with her own test column, a small thing toward the back of the paper that Rachel, Xavier’s aunt, managed to snag for her after a columnist quit. Rachel tells her to make it her own, to write about whatever suits her fancy. Apparently, they’ll give her a two-week trial run and make their decision on whether to keep her on or not. She can’t think of anything to write so ten minutes before the deadline she sends one of her poems in, one she wrote high on love in her fifth year, before everything came tumbling down.

Her poems become her columns, and it’s four days later that Lucy gets called into the editor’s office, and all she can think of is that at least her firing will be personal and not in one of those emails that are so indifferent. She meets the lad, a Mr. Barry Saunders, and she’s steeling herself for a disappointing blow when he just gives her a sturdy clap on the back and says to keep up the good work. _We’re diversifying our content_ , he smiles, _and your poetry makes a lovely addition. You’ve got quite the talent with words, Miss Weasley._

But her high doesn’t seem to last long. During the same weekend that Percy and Oliver decide to take a holiday to visit Oliver’s family up in Scotland and see a bit more of the countryside, Teddy shows up at their doorstep, drunk out of his mind. Sebastian’s over, and nearly pushes him down the steps in rage. She doesn’t know whether to hate or to pity him. How _dare_ he try to do this to her sister, to take the coward’s way out and try to confront her in a drunken stupor? But at the same time, she _understands_ , that rotting, decaying feeling within the very depths of her chest that she knew all too well.

Lucy looks at this man, the man who caused her sister so much pain, and she cannot help but understand it. His wedding not even six months away, planned quickly (at Victorie’s insistence, no doubt) and he’s sitting defeatedly on the steps of her childhood home, his breath burning with the putrid smell of too much firewhiskey _. Just let me talk to her, Lucy. I can fix this; I can fix all of this if you just let me talk to her._ She sends Bash inside and sits beside Teddy, rubbing his back as he begins to vomit into their flowerbed, choosing her words carefully _. I… I think there comes a point when just it’s too late, Ted, and I think you guys passed that a long time ago. She’s married and… and she’s happy, genuinely happy. You and Victorie have been ruining her happiness long enough, don’t you think? Just let her be happy, please. If there’s one thing Molly really, really deserves, it’s happiness._ All Teddy can do is nod miserably, but she can see the sort of realization that darkens his eyes.

She apparates him back to the flat he shares with Victorie, just to find her sitting at their kitchen island, elegant as ever, with a glass of white wine in her hand and her legs crossed. _Went to your house, then, did he?_ Victorie can tell why Lucy keeps silent, because a bitter laugh escapes her throat. _Trying to protect me, are you, Lucy? Merlin, your entire family is so bloody self-righteous. I know he goes to the cinema and that bloody café on Winston, drunk off his arse. Really, I mean, it’s pathetic._ Lucy speaks before she can think otherwise. _Why go through all of this? What did Molly do to make you hate her so much?_ Victorie looks so much like the ice queen she was born to be.

Sometimes she wonders if Victorie was always this way, because while it doesn’t seem like she’s ever been kinder, she doesn’t think anyone could really be born this utterly utilitarian. _Ever since we were born, it was supposed to be Teddy and me. It was always supposed to be Teddy and me. She tried to take him away from me. _There’s a pause that seems much too long. _Teddy was supposed to be my happy ending._ Lucy doesn’t mention that she and Teddy weren’t even _together_ when he met Molly, or that all Molly did was be herself. She has nothing else to say, except something that she means with complete sincerity. _Well, Victorie, for your sake and for his, I really hope your happy ending was worth it_. She apparates back, falls asleep in Bash’s arms on the sofa, and both of them wake up to Oliver giving out about _what the bloody hell is all over my tulips? I just planted those, for God’s sake._

She knows all about Bash’s family, how he’s got three older siblings and two younger ones. His sister, Elenora, is the oldest, and she’s their father’s favorite (while Bash gets the title of his mother’s favorite, even in exile), the only one who could ever get away with a bit of rebellion unscathed, even though she abides by tradition the most, now. She’s a pureblood socialite, engaged to some spineless Shafiq (her old muggle flame not quite forgotten) who, while apparently oblivious, treats her like a goddess. His older twin brothers, Alexander and William, love to tease him and can’t believe that _he’s_ the one who ended up going pro for Quidditch. She remembers his younger sister and little brother, Cassandra and Theodore, from Hogwarts, and how he always used to light up when he saw them. His mother sends him owls, however short, his older siblings send him presents, however teasing, but his father doesn’t send him anything at all.

His parents don’t speak with him (aside from his mother’s secret, perfunctory owls), but she meets the three of his older siblings for the first time about a week after the Teddy incident. Bash takes her to this fancy wizarding restaurant in the old part of Diagon Alley in his nicest suit, and she’s got on this sleek shimmering dress that falls halfway past her knees. It’s full of old, pureblood magic and money. They have a table by the window and she meets his stunning sister and his mischievous older brothers. _Lucy Weasley_ , Alexander smiles, _I never thought we’d have the honor. All Bash has been talking about for years has been “Lucy this” and “Lucy that”. We were beginning to think he’d made you up_.

She meets Balthazar Cankerous Nott on a sunny Tuesday morning, completely by accident. She’s walking down Diagon Alley with Amelia, who was setting off to meet Freddie for a bit of lunch. She slipped in to the Quidditch Supply Shop and was perusing through the gloves, hoping to find Bash a new pair. She sees an older man about to pick the worst brand of broom polish and says, without thinking, _Rhydian Woodock’s Wondershine is the best you’re going to get, you know. The one you’ve got, Presto Polish, doesn’t work that well. You need about four tubes to get even a bit of shine, and it smells remarkably similar to the eye of Newt. The only reason it’s still in business is because Andy McLaggen endorses it for a pretty penny._ The man looks up, inquisitively at first, and then back to the shelf, and grabs a tube of Woodock’s Wondershine _. It’s for my youngest._ _He’s been bothering me to get him some, but I don’t know a thing about the sport. His brothers would know more than I would._

She’s about to respond, but feels someone pick her up by her waist from behind, twirling her around, and in an instant, she knows it’s Bash. He pecks a kiss on her cheek and she’s smiling like a lunatic when he says _I saw you through the window and I just couldn’t resist. This is a nice sur_ … but his voice drifts off and she finds him staring at the old man with a lethal, serious look on his face. Lucy doesn’t really have any idea what’s going on, so she goes to say _Bash, this is…_ without even knowing what his name was, but he cuts her off with _my father. This is my father, Luce, Baltazar Nott._ And she doesn’t really know what to say to that.

_Lucy Weasley_ , Bash’s father muses, his head cocked a bit in questioning, and she can’t tell whether it’s the beginnings of a sly grin or pursed disapproval. But before he can get any other words out, Bash’s hand interlaces with hers and he says _If you’ll excuse me, Dad, I’ve got an afternoon planned with my girlfriend. Say hi to mother for me, will you?_ Once they’re out of the shop, on the sidewalk at the storefront, he pulls her into a bone-crushing hug and says _I love you, you know that, don’t you?_ He’s said it before, of course, they both have, too many times to count, but this time is different. _‘Course I do, Bash. I love you too_. A sort of half smile creeps up on his face and he kisses her forehead. _Good, because this is it, Lucy Weasley. You and me._

For what seems like the first time, life is truly and completely good. She’s doing something she enjoys. She’s with the love of her life. Her sister and father are both happy. Amelia is happy with Freddie and Rebecca is happy with being Rebecca. She couldn’t ask for anything more.

And in an instant, it all completely unravels.

Lucy is just eighteen when she has her first true bipolar episode. Her mania lasts just over two days, where she runs without sleep and organizes enough column submissions for the next three months. She also tries to convince Bash to elope with her, and when he refuses on account of her strange, erratic behavior, she pushes him and berates him and says unforgivable things before apparating away to her Gran’s house, completely high on the beauty of life and the utter vastness of human thought. She tells her Gran so, how she woke up the morning of yesterday with her mind in unprecedented clarity, and there’s a fearful flicker of understanding that ghosts through her eyes before she asks Lucy if she’s had anything to drink, or taken any sort of pills. She refuses adamantly, and finds out later, when she falls asleep and wakes up in the hospital, feeling completely hopeless and devastatingly numb, that her Gran was probably hoping for drugs to be the reason.

It turns out Lucy is more like her mother than she thought. Percy tells her and Molly about their mother’s bipolar disorder when Lucy’s a night away from being discharged from the muggle hospital her Gran brought her to. Her mother was on medication since before Molly was born, and intermittently even before that, but their Da knew her in what seemed to be the worst of it: after her father and younger siblings passed away in the car crash that she survived. And apparently she’d met him in his darkest hour, when he didn’t see the point of living a life he’d stolen from his dead brother, with a family who hated him.

They fixed each other, Percy said, _and we gave each other the love and help that we weren’t able to give to ourselves_. Lucy’s apparently balanced, now, or so the muggle doctors say, and she’s got to take however many pills each day, twice a day, but they she’ll be herself, anyway. Lucy’s starting to wonder who “herself” really is at all, if she needs all these drugs to get there.

Bash welcomes her back, visiting her every day in that muggle hospital, and treats her as if that entire night never happened. And while things might not be much different for him, they feel different for _her_. She’s walking around in someone else’s skin now, it seems, slipping into something that doesn’t quite fit, and she feels so out of place that she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She said awful things to him, terrible things that she remembers with a hateful clarity.

She lasts a whole eight days before she can’t pretend any longer, and she ends up crying on James’ floor, screaming at the top of her lungs because she just can’t bear to pretend that she’s still the person she’s been. He understands change better than most, and he just holds her as she cries and tells her yo _u can’t just listen to what everybody else tells you, Luce. You know yourself, even if you think you’re not quite sure now. You can get all the help and medication in the world, Luce, and it won’t do fuck-all if you’re not invested. It’s not easy- well, it’s hell, actually- but you need to find yourself. Nobody else can do it for you_.

She has no idea who she is now. And she won’t be able to live with herself until she finds out.

She has her bags packed less than four hours later, with agonizing letters written to Molly, Percy, and Bash. She’ll owl her friends, James, and Gran later on to tell them she’s safe. She’s a coward, not talking to them in person, just running away, and she knows that, but she just _can’t_ bring herself to face them. She feels like a stranger to them now, like the last eighteen years of her life have been one big lie, and she’s nothing more than a ghost. She doesn’t want them loving a lie. She leaves with tears in her eyes and the terrifying realization that there’s no going back. Nothing is ever going to be the same, and that’s the way it has to be.

And that’s how Lucy spends nearly three years travelling the world, searching for herself as if she’d be able to find her identity at some coordinates in the Asian steppes or the Patagonian desert. She still keeps contact with home, but she’s taken to calling Molly on her muggle phone and writing her father when she can. James has even come out for sporadic visits, to some of the places that she’s been, and he gives her all the news that her father wouldn’t bother putting in a letter and that Molly wouldn’t be inclined to say on the phone, the most recent bits being that Teddy and Victorie are officially divorced (Lucy didn’t want to go anywhere _near_ that wedding anyway), Freddie’s thinking of proposing to Amelia soon (but she has to keep it a secret), Dom has taken a page from Lucy’s book and fled to France with her daughter in tow (without any plans to return, it seems), and Albus and Elle have finally gotten together (not that it didn’t take an _extreme_ amount of effort on James’ part that he has no problem bragging about).

He doesn’t mention anything about Bash and Lucy acts like she hasn’t already been informed by Rebecca that he’s been engaged for nearly three months.

She still sends her poems in for the Daily Telegraph, and has even taking to writing a few travel articles when she can. She’s stable, taking her medication every day, on the dot, no matter the time zone. She thinks about the man she gave up, about the perfect life she could’ve had if she’d just been able to pretend, and how it belongs to some other girl now. (She’s a complete fluke according to Rebecca, but Lucy doesn’t believe that. She likes to think Bash had decent taste.) She never heard or tried to hear anything from him again, after that letter. She places bets on the Wasps, and wins a fair bit of money from them. He and James are a part of the handful of Britain’s, and possibly Europe’s, best quidditch players. In ways, this heartbreak was harder than the last, even though she’s gotten through it before. She walked away. _She’s_ the one who gave up her happiness. It didn’t matter that she did it for him, because she didn’t want him to spend any more time loving a lie. She doesn’t have anybody to blame but herself.

James is gone from Argentina for just under two weeks when she’s sitting at a café and watching two little girls, sisters, play as their parents order, their hands firmly interlocked. She’s always missed her family, and apparates back to her mother’s grave for every anniversary. She even sees Charlie on the tenth one and they go for a drink. (Ivy got tested for that condition and it came back negative. Julian is seeing this Ravenclaw, Bernadette Wallace, and she’s as smart as a whip. Charlie says she looks more like her mother than ever, and Lucy gives him a hug while crying into his arms.)

She’s watching them intently, and when the older girl trips as they’re chasing each other in circles, and the younger one helps her up and offers to play a hand game instead, Lucy realizes, instantaneously and overwhelmingly, that she knows exactly who she is: Molly’s sister. Lucile Minerva Weasley is Molly’s sister, Percy’s daughter, Gran’s granddaughter, James’ cousin, Amelia and Rebecca’s best friend, and she’s so much more.

She doesn’t know why it takes her so long to realize that she’s always been challenged and bettered by the people around her, but she books a portkey back to London on the very same night. Percy is completely surprised to see her, and it breaks her heart the slightest bit to see that three places for dinner are still set out for him and Oliver after these years, and Lucy suddenly wants to profusely apologize, but he gives her a hug so tight that she can tell he’s saying that there’s nothing to forgive.

Molly is much the same when Lucy shows up to her doorstep the next morning. Coffee, tea, and biscuits are thrown frantically in her direction as her older sister asks how her travels were. _Amazing_ , Lucy says, _but I’m home now, for good_. The smile Molly gives her is blinding. They seem to dance around the subject of Bash, and for now, Lucy is grateful for it.

Children are yet another thing robbed from Molly, or so the muggle doctors said. But they’ve been waiting for possibilities for eighteen months and finally, two weeks after Lucy is home, they officially adopt muggle children, fourteen month old Una and six month old Paddy, and Lucy never realized what it would be like to love a child so much as she loves her niece and nephew. They look so adorable she can’t get over it. Molly was made to be a mother, just like their own mother was, and she can see it in the way she rocks them, in the way she sings to them and in the way she _loves_ them that it’s true.

She never gave kids much thought, just that she wanted a whole army of them. She loves her sister more than life itself, and she wants her children to feel that sort of all-encompassing love and support that she’s only ever constantly felt from her sister and her parents. She’d want them like dominoes, one after the other, and have at least one with Bash’s fiery eyes. Being with her sister’s kids has only rekindled hopes for a dream that can never become a reality.

She sees Bash for the first time in years at a park they’d always used to walk in, the same one they started to walk in during that Christmas in her fifth year, when she brings Molly’s kids out for a day so her sister and Xavier can enjoy some alone time. He’s walking alone and she doesn’t even recognize him with the dark beard he’s grown in (and she really wishes it didn’t suit him, but it really _does_ ).

The way he calls out her name, like she’s a ghost who’s probably not even there, breaks her heart all over again, and she freezes for a moment before turning around to be confronted with the great love of her life as she holds the children in either arm. He freezes as well, looking a bit perplexed, unable to look away from the kids in her hands, and the first thing she says to him after all these years is _they’re not mine. I mean, they’re my sisters_.

For just a fraction of a moment he looks like he wants to smile, but it’s gone even quicker than it came, and she’s left standing in silence. _How long are you back for_? The question hangs menacingly, but she replies with a hoarse, quiet _for good_. He seems to look her over, then, studying her like she’s this unsolvable mathematics problem, with a stone countenance. _Well, I hope you found what you were looking for, then_. And he’s gone and she’s slumped against a park bench, tears streaming down her face and her niece and nephew in either hand. _I found what I needed_ , she thinks, _but lost nearly everything I ever wanted_.

And suddenly she can’t avoid him. He and his stunning fiancée, Valencia Fawley, grace the cover of every other magazine and publication she can get her hands on (with James being one of the few other popular faces. He’s seemed to have developed a bit of a _reputation_ , even though she knows it’s completely undeserved – the public needs its spectacle).

She’s a model – beautiful, graceful, and pureblooded. She’s the very opposite of everything that made Lucy so unacceptable to his family.

It seems like their wedding is going to be the social event of the season, a pureblood, sport, and fashion function all at once. This woman, this _beautiful_ woman, with hair the color of gold and eyes of toffee has an interview in Witch Weekly each week about her career, her wedding, her and ‘ _Seb’s’_ – Seb, that what she calls him, what _everyone_ seems to call him, now – latest vacations.

They seem happy, in a glamorous, high society sort of way that she never expected Bash to be so fitted for. Yet, there he stands, his arm around the waist of his fiancée at some red carpet event, looking as devilishly handsome as ever in a suit that reminds her of that time they had dinner with his siblings. (It makes her sick to think about how many more times this Valencia Fawley must’ve met them.)

She’s crying on her floor when James pops by in the new flat she’s rented, with magazines and newspapers strewn across the wood, and all he does is sigh, lift her up by her shoulders, and tell her that they’re going out for the night. _Where_? She sniffles, her eyes red and her heart in pieces. James gives her a somewhat bleak smile and replies that it’s _somewhere you need to be. Come on, Luce. I need you there too_. She doubts anyone’s able to resist his puppy eyes, and before she knows it, she’s being whisked away to James’ personal stylist, an American from Texas ( _Hello, doll, I’m Carla. Aren’t you just a peach?_), and spends the next two hours being prepped like she’s some goddess.

Her face is done up and she’s slipped into this gorgeous, blue dress, the same color that storms in her eyes, with a tight bodice that flows down, pooling elegantly on to the floor. She looks in the mirror and can barely even recognize herself, her hair curled into shimmering honey and beaten copper waves, and she still has no idea where the bloody hell they’re going. _Just trust me, alright, Luce?_ James laughs, all fixed up in a dapper looking suit of his own. They apparate, leaving Carla waving happily at them. ( _Y’all have fun_!)

In complete honesty, if she’d known where they were going, she’s not sure if she’d be mortified or delighted. But, as they arrive at the British Isle Quidditch Awards, she is completely and utterly blindsided by cameras and squeals of delight and reporters asking who it is that James Potter has brought with him to the award ceremony. Lucy can only imagine the horror on her face when James answers, with his perfect smile, _This is my cousin, actually, Lucy Weasley. She’s been traveling the world for a bit. If you’ll excuse us_.

James is merciful, only going down the carpet for photos for a couple of minutes, reassuring her all the while. _You need this, Luce. You’d have already been gone if you didn’t._ She supposes that he’s right, that she needs to be able to see him without completely breaking down, but as they walk into the venue and she’s confronted with a smiling Bash, his arm draped devastatingly low around his fiancée’s waist, she can’t _breathe_. James guides her over to a table nearby, facing away from them, thank God, and gets her a champagne glass which is emptied too quickly. She’s not too stressed, however, to notice that he’s only got himself a seltzer water.

And the night, actually, goes relatively pleasantly, for a while. She meets James’ friends and teammates and laughs more than she expected. Malcolm Ryeland, one of James’ closer teammates, an up-and-coming Beater, is hilarious, and takes over the job of bringing her champagne when James slides away to greet more people who adore him. A few hours later, she’s starting to even be _glad_ that she came; until, that is, she hears Valencia laugh particularly loud (yet still as graceful as can be), and her gaggle of admirers following suit.

_Oh, Seb’s proposal was absolutely amazing_, she can hear Valencia Fawley’s beautifully articulate voice filter through to her ears, and the sighs that accompanied the people surrounding her. She hates how she can _feel_ her heart clench. _It was the day after the championship match when he won against the Magpies. He took me to his parents’ estate for lunch, and while we were on a walk through the gardens, he popped the question! But the most magical part has got to be the ring. At first, honestly, I wasn’t too crazy about the amber accent stones, sapphires have always been my favorite, but I suppose that’s just my Ravenclaw coming though, isn’t it? But I absolutely adore them now, and they go marvelously with my hair, oh, and the inscription! Oh here, let me read it: my sunshine, my happiness. Always, Bash_.

And if things couldn’t get any worse, they just did. She meets his eyes, then, because he overheard the whole thing and _knows_ that she knows, and it’s all too much. She rushes from the event room, James and Malcolm forgotten, memories swirling around in her head, threatening to drown her. All the mornings spent on his couch, one hand slung into his muggle tracksuit bottoms and the other around her shoulder, his face nuzzled in between the crook of her neck and her hair, whispering the sweet words of _yellow_ and _sunshine_ and _happiness_ : the words that seemed to define their relationship. She never really realized that words could be so sacred until the love of her life used those beautiful words on another, like they were _nothing_.

She knows he’s following her out, and she doesn’t stop until she’s in some dimly lit, unused side room just off the main hall, and she can’t even face him when she asks. _When_? They both know there’s no point in denying that the ring was meant for her, that it was meant for _them_ , but he has the audacity to ask _When, what_? And she turns around, unable to help biting back _When did you buy the ring_?

_My_ ring, she wants to say, wants to _scream_ , but the worlds can’t quite claw their way out of her throat. She doesn’t know which answer she wants to hear more, before or after she left, but the answer he gives manages to surprise her all the same. _I put the order in the day after Hogsmeade, when you first replied to my letter. Asked for an advance in my contract to pay for it_. And she doesn’t know what to say to that. What _can_ she say to that, that the man she’s loved since she was fifteen had a ring for her since he was eighteen, the same ring that’s now on another girl’s finger? _What were you waiting for_? The question, both venomously accusatory and heartbreakingly, vulnerably nostalgic, blurts out of her mouth before she can stop it, but her heart is already so shattered that she doesn’t think it can get any worse; she just needs to know the _truth_.

But evidently, she’s wrong.

He looks at her, then, _really_ looks at her, like how he used to do when they’d walk in that park, the park she hasn’t been to since she ran into him that day with Molly’s kids. It’s only for a moment, before his gaze flashes down at his expensive, polished shoes, but it’s enough for her to know that she won’t like the answer. _I already did, once, Luce_ , he whispers slowly, drawing out each word like the mountains he’d sketch for a landscape, his pencil always lingering on the canvas. _It was Molly’s wedding reception, out by that lake. Poured my heart out to you. I know you don’t remember. You know what you said to me? ‘Ask me again, Bash, when I’m sober, when I’ll remember. You don’t have to worry about me saying yes. You’re my yellow, too.’ It’s funny how our promises go though, isn’t it_?

She steps toward him after that, her eyebrows knit together and a frown she just can’t get rid of. She reaches her hand out, her fingertips less than an inch away from his face, _dying_ to touch him, to have _some_ part of him be real to her again. His eyes droop shut, then, and she can sense he’s trying to do something similar, willing himself to pretend, that for just a _moment_ , they are as they were, without the betrayal, cowardice, and three years of space between them. But she thinks of the ring, _her_ ring, around Valencia Fawley’s finger, and that they aren’t the same people anymore. That’s why she left: she wasn’t _Lucy_ anymore. But he’s not _Bash_ anymore, either, is he?

She pulls her hand away as if she’s just been burned, and the sudden movement causes those inferno eyes to open again, and she looks at him for a moment before muttering _Goodnight, Seb. That’s who you are now, isn’t it?_ She whisks herself away, through the doors of the event hall and out toward the cameras where she’s once again photographed like some talented zoo animal before she makes it to the Apparition point and gets the hell out of there.

And now, after that night, it seems as though Lucy Weasley’s the next best thing. The Daily Prophet paints her as all mystery and glamor and travelling socialite, even though none of it could be further from the truth. She supposes fleeing the country after a mental breakdown doesn’t paint the same mystique, does it? They try to do any and all research they can on her, only really digging up her Hogwart’s house and Quidditch record. But then again, that only seems to spur them on.

She answers her door two days after the media begins its hunt and is confronted with Baltazar Nott’s wry smile, holding a walking staff by his side that’s probably worth more than her entire apartment. _May I come in, Lucy? I think you and I have some things to discuss_. They make awkward and painfully uncomfortable small talk until she puts freshly brewed coffee and some biscuits in front of him. _I never did understand the appeal of this drink_ , he muses, holding the mug more pensively than Lucy thinks one ought to hold a coffee cup with kittens on it, _it’s scalding and bitter and yet muggles are just incomprehensibly mad over it_.

He puts the mug down, then, and Lucy’s gaze is confronted with devastatingly familiar green eyes. _I suppose I misunderstood you in the same way, Lucy Weasley. You appear to be, and please do excuse my bluntness, a relatively unrefined, unambitious, Hufflepuff half-blood. When we’d first heard that Sebastian was seeing you, back in Hogwarts, we did our research, trying to see if there was any shred of compatibility to be found. We found none, you see, which is what led my wife and myself to try and arrange an engagement for him, and I could not, for the life of me, figure out why Sebastian has seemed so utterly miserable._

And with his words, Lucy’s heart breaks all over again. It seems to be doing a lot of that, lately. _And then, of course, he left his entire legacy for you, and I still could not wrap my head around why. And then… and then, I met the two of you in that shop_. He pauses for a handful of moments, a wistful, haunted smile coming to his face. _Sebastian is with a girl his mother and I could have only wished for. Valencia… she’s beautiful, well-bred, from an old family. She’s charismatic and charming and everything in between, and if I never saw the two of you in that Quidditch shop, I’d say Sebastian is the happiest he’s ever been, and could ever be. I would’ve said that he’d found his soulmate. But I did see you two, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice the amber stones on the engagement ring or the subscription he still has for that muggle newspaper._ There’s a long pause that Lucy’s got no idea how to fill. _He was happier in those moments with you than he’s ever been in these past years, and I’ve thought about that fact at length._

He stands up then, and she stands with him, leaving the coffee to cool on the table. She walks him out and before she closes the door, he says one last thing that makes her think. _He loves you, you know. And I can see you love him too. Love may not have been enough in my time, but it seems to be much more powerful now. I know it may not seem like it, to you or to him, but his mother and I have always wanted what’s best for him. Please, remember that_. And he’s gone.

She tries to get on with her life. She ignores the magazine covers that say Bash’s wedding is only sixth months away, and then five, and then four. She celebrates with Amelia when Freddie pops the question, which is apparently when they’re making dinner together. If Amelia’s to be believed, which she always is, he knelt down and stayed frozen for a good ten seconds before saying _I had a whole speech prepared, but I’m so bloody nervous I can’t remember it for the life of me, so just marry me, will you?_

She goes out with the girls and has more than a few drinks, and when she’s heading home she can’t help but stop at that _stupid_ park, and her mind suddenly drifts to Teddy Lupin, and how much they’re alike, and it makes her skin _squirm_. They both threw away their own chance at a happy ending, and now their wallowing in their own self-pity, miserable by their own design. She doesn’t know if he’s _still_ doing it, of course; she hasn’t seen him in three years, but she knows that her sister is practically impossible to live without once she’s been in your life. She’s sitting on that stupid park bench that he cast a warming charm on for them on that Boxing Day in fifth year, and she understands Teddy just a bit more.

_Lovely night, hm_? The voice makes her startle, and for some inexplicable reason he’s there, walking up to her with his hands stuffed in his designer tweed coat, sitting down beside her. _What are you doing here_? She forces out, attempting to keep her voice even the whole time. She’s a bit too drunk to bother if she actually does or not, and by his hoarse laugh, he seems to know exactly that. He’s not drunk, but he isn’t sober either; she can tell by the lightness of his features and the wide breadth of his eyes. He doesn’t answer immediately, and that’s when she looks up into that burning jungle gaze with flecks of gold- she’s nearly brave enough to call them _yellow_ \- and she doesn’t look away, and neither does he. The time for fear has passed hours ago, along with her fifth cosmo.

_Suppose I just couldn’t say away_. He mutters, looking at her for far too long before turning away. _I come here sometimes. I can’t just forget, you know_. She grabs his hand then, furious and heartbroken, and his gaze zaps toward her, to their fingers intertwined, and back to her. _I can’t forget either_. And it’s stinging, the way he bites back _well it was awfully easy for you, wasn’t it?_ She’s stunned to silence for a moment, and Bash seems to take that as his moment to pounce. _‘I just can’t bear the thought of living a lie.’ Would loving me really be such a horrible lie? We would’ve been fine, but no, you just had to run away when it mattered most, didn’t you, Luce? And leave me what, that blasted letter?_ He’s still holding her hand, because as much as they may be angry with each other, they were never good at letting go completely, and all Lucy can do is shake her head. _We wouldn’t have been fine, Bash, because there’d be one day when I just couldn’t keep pretending I was alright anymore, and who knows when that would’ve been? You could’ve spent two, five, maybe even ten years loving someone who didn’t even exist anymore. I… I just couldn’t do that to you, no matter how much I wanted to pretend, it just wasn’t in me to risk hurting you like that._

She just kind of melts into him, then, snuggling into the crook of his arm while fighting off tears, each one dripping down like wax from a candle burning too long, and she’s confident he must’ve cast that warming charm again, because the cold is probably the furthest thing from her mind, and suddenly everything is as it was, as it should be. _You’re my only one_ , _you know_ , she whispers before she can quite think through what she’s doing. _I won’t find anybody else like that, like you, but that’s okay, I think. I can make it okay. I wouldn’t want another… another replacement_.

He doesn’t say anything, and their hands are still interlaced, and oh _God_ she just realized what she said, and even if she’s beyond tipsy she needs to fix it. _But… but I know you’re happy, and I know you’ll be okay, and I think that can be good enough for_ – but she doesn’t have the foggiest recollection of what she was going to say because he’s kissing her, and it isn’t even a fraction of a second before she’s kissing him back, and it’s like she’s fifteen, sixteen, seventeen all over again, her mind obliterated by love. It feels like an eternity and like no time at all, how easily they fit together, how clearly they remember each other’s bodies, sitting wrapped up together on that park bench. And Lucy loves him, God, she _loves_ him, and she can’t even try to deny it anymore, but he’s engaged. The man she’s in love with is _engaged_.

_Wait_ , she breathes, handing moving to his chest. _Wait, Bash_ , and all is quiet save their own heavy breathing, before she speaks again, whispering _Valencia still has my ring, doesn’t she_? And his silence is answer enough. _You’re engaged. You come here and you kiss me and you’re still fucking engaged. _

She pushes him away then, and on unsteady feet, stands and heads off in the direction toward her flat. _Luce, wait_ , Bash calls after her, and she can hear him jogging up _, you’re going the wrong way_. She doesn’t acknowledge him, because she knows he’s talking about her father’s house and not her new flat, which she _knows_ is ten minutes off this way. He doesn’t try to fight with her afterwards, though, and just follows her. He follows and follows until she walks up to her door, pulls out her key and turns around to slam the door straight in his face, but she sees his eyes, those damn eyes, and something new escapes her throat.

_Your father visited me, you know_ , and once it’s out, she can’t take it back, because his eyebrows are already furrowed, and he’s got a frown on his face. _He said you loved me, that you still love me. Is that true_? The silence goes on for far too long, and so she takes a step forward, eyes burning into his own. She won’t turn away from him this time. _Bash, is it true?_ And his fingers go to her cheek, then, just like the walk back from that train ride all those years ago that she’ll never be able to forget, and his voice is so soft she nearly doesn’t hear him. _You know the answer, Luce. I’ve tried to move on, to forget, but… it’s you. It’s always been you_.

He gets closer, and he’s just holding her, wrapped in a hug, saying _I was so fucking angry when you left. You were so sad, so devastated, and instead of coming to me, of trying to talk to me, you fucking left. I went around to everyone, trying to figure out where you’d gone, when you’d be coming back. That first year was utter hell, Luce, and that’s when Len convinced me to start talking with Dad and Mum again. And then I met Valencia, and I wanted to forget about you, to stop loving you, so fucking bad, so I tried to make it happen. But I just couldn’t forget about you, no matter how much I wanted to, and those bloody articles and poems in the paper only made it hurt more, but I couldn’t stop_. She feels wetness on her cheeks, can taste the salt of tears, and she’s not sure whether they’re hers or his. Probably both. _So I proposed, and I told myself I’d make it work, desperate to make it work, thinking if we went far enough then my heart would just accept that it was time to move on, and I was actually fooling myself for a bit, but then you came back. So it’s you, Luce. It’s always been you. I’ll make this right, I promise_.

She doesn’t know whether she loves or hates the fact it’s still so damn easy to believe in him, to believe in _them_. She nods minutely, then, and he can feel it against his body because he steps back and says _I love you, Luce. I’m not afraid to say it anymore._ He’s nodding in goodbye, then, and walking down her footpath, before Lucy calls back _I love you too, Bash_. The darkness isn’t enough to hide his blinding smile, and there’s this warmth in her chest that she hasn’t felt properly in years: _hope_.

She awakes the next morning to sun filtering through her curtains and a knock at her door. She’s got a stupid smile on her face, one that she realizes she used to have before, that completely shatters when she sees Valencia Fawley’s designer velvet blue pumps on her porch. She’s beautiful, golden hair shining in the sun, the lenses of her sunglasses reflecting Lucy’s bedhead and ratty sweatpants. She holds a piece of old paper in one hand and her purse is draped elegantly across her other arm. She takes off her sunglasses, still carefully silent. The amber stones in her engagement ring glitter. _Lucy Weasley_ , Valencia says, not quite a question but with a vein of confusion all the same, _may I come in? I think we have a few things to discuss_.

She sits where Baltazar Nott sat, the same cat cup steaming in front of her. _I didn’t know you in school. I was older, two years ahead of Bash. For the pureblood circle, he didn’t hang around much. None of his siblings did, except maybe Lenora, after her own little… rebellion. I was surprised, seeing him back at a function after all the drama after his graduation_. A slight smile comes to her face as if she’s living the entire memory again. But her gaze hardens, not necessarily in aggression, but there’s resentment all the same. _We dated for nearly a year, and he never mentioned you. Didn’t even say your name. His brother Willy was actually who first told me about you. He was drunk, of course, just babbling on. “Good to see him getting out. That Lucy Weasley really mucked him up. She’s the reason he left it all, you know, and then she goes and leaves him. Only met her once, though. Never did see him quite that happy.” And then… then it was like I couldn’t get away from you. Whispers about where in the world you were, what your latest articles were about. All of his siblings, even Len, have a subscription to that muggle paper you write for. He does too, and when I started watching, I notice he’d only read one or two things before tossing it in the bin. I’ve even seen his father with it, on occasion. You were always there, like some kind of ghost. So, one day, I had enough, and I just asked him_.

From what Lucy’s seen of Valencia Fawley, she paints a pretty picture. All of her reactions are measured, calculated, as anyone with her level of etiquette would. But here, in private, Lucy can see the emotions, the anger, the sadness, run across her face just a bit better. _And that was our first and only real fight, when I asked him who you were, to tell me about you. I told myself that him not mentioning you meant you weren’t important, that you didn’t matter. He blew up, told me that it was none of my business, went and stayed at his friend Nate’s house, came back, and it was like nothing ever happened. I thought about it almost every single day. When he proposed to me, I thought of you. And that was before I saw the amber stones and found out you were in Hufflepuff_.

And she laughs, then, and while it’s light, there’s this slight bitter irony to it. _I thought that after the wedding, things would be different. Easier. He’d have been a good husband to me – kind, faithful… if I could just hold out, I’d be his wife, and you’d just be some ghost on the other side of the world. That we could make each other our own. And then, of course, you had to come back and keep writing and go to that carpet event. All of a sudden, the ghost was real_.

Valencia pauses for a handful of moments, then, as if she’s wondering why she’s here at all, telling Lucy any of this. Lucy wonders the same, but like with Baltazar Nott, can’t force any words out of her throat.

_Seb asked me to meet him for coffee this morning, to talk things over_ , she says, just before she’s out the door. _I think we both know what it’s going to be about_ , she continues, fiddling with that ring that caused her so much distress a few months ago. Almost impulsively, she takes it off and drops it into Lucy’s hand. _It was meant to be yours, anyway_. She stops short, still somehow the picture of elegance and grace in all of her insecurity. _Take care of him, Lucy Weasley. He’s probably the best man I’ve ever met. He could make so many people so happy, and I suppose you’re the only one who can do the same for him, really. Don’t muck it up_. And with Lucy’s nod, she’s gone, with a swish of her skirt and a soft pop.

She gives him the ring back that afternoon, and his surprised vulnerability has her practically jumping to reassure him that _no, it’s not that I don’t want to marry you, I just don’t want this ring. I can’t have this ring_. And she thinks he understands, about how to her, as beautiful as it was, and as much as she would’ve loved it three years ago, it represents something different now. Another woman wore this ring for nearly a year, and Lucy won’t be able to wear it again without thinking about Valencia, about those three, terribly painful years they were apart. And while she doesn’t want to forget about them, because that time gave her back her sense of self in a way nothing else really could, she knows that to really move on, it’s going to take a bit of letting go. And now, without having to stare at that ring every second, she knows it’ll be that much easier.

_Let’s get married – right now_ , he whispers to her, the next morning, after they’ve spent the entire time together in bed. He’s missed his evening training, and he’ll probably get hell for it, but they’ve missed out on so much wasted time already. _We can go to the muggle courthouse right now, and I can schedule an appointment at the Ministry for this afternoon. It can all be official before dinner_.

She smiles serenely, eyes closed, and asks _but don’t you want family there? Dad and Molly – Oliver, Rebecca, Amelia – and James, they all need to be there, Bash_. And he grins, saying _then invite them. I’ll owl my family right now, tell them to be at the Ministry for two, or the muggle courthouse earlier, if you want them at both_. She giggles then, interlacing her fingers with his own as she points out that _I don’t even have a ring_.

He grins, then, like the Cheshire Cat, and pulls out a plain, platinum band from nowhere, and Lucy can’t breathe. _Is that – Bash, is that what I think it is?_ He puts his hand to her cheek, wiping away the beginning of her tears. _I spoke to your father, after I talked it over with Valencia… asked for his blessing. It wasn’t meant to be sexist or anything, I just know how close you are, and he gave me this. Thank Merlin he did, because I would’ve really have been out of luck, otherwise, wouldn’t I?_

He looks like he’s going to keep babbling, so Lucy cuts him off with a kiss, deep and soft and vulnerable. He pulls away from her then, and with them both tangled between her blue striped sheets, slips her mother’s engagement ring onto her finger. _I’ll call Molly_ , she grins, bare feet landing clumsily on her wooden floor. _Call who you want! Give them the address of the muggle courthouse and tell them to be there for eleven!_

So that’s how she ends up at the muggle courthouse, surrounded by the closest of her friends and family, marrying the love of her life. She’s got her mother’s wedding dress on, the alterations overseen by an ecstatic Molly and done magically by Amelia (she was always the best out of them when it came to exact magic). It’s cold outside, the frost still not completely gone, with her mother’s anniversary passed but spring not yet upon them. Ordinarily, most would just see it as another bleak, cold, English day, but to Lucy, it’s everything.

Bash’s family and friends are there as well, and she meets his mother minutes before the ceremony, enough for a hug and _I’m glad you make him so happy. Truly_. They’re (almost laughably) more out of place than the others, dressed in robes and the like for the wizarding courthouse later on, but in that moment, all she cares about is how Bash is in front of her, slipping her mother’s wedding ring on her finger as well, as she gives him a ring transfigured from the old letter he sent her, the one that got them back together in the first place. Their kiss is a promise, a vow, one they’re both ready to commit to. The applause after they kiss sounds deafening to the new Mrs. Lucy Nott, and she can’t keep the smile off her face.

The wizarding ceremony passes much the same way, and Lucy’s left with this immovable smile on her face, and Bash has invited everyone back to his place, and that’s when she actually starts thinking about the consequences. Whose apartment will they move into? What will the press say, Bash married a day after he breaks off his engagement? What about everybody who wasn’t invited? Will they have another ceremony? Are they even going to have a honeymoon? All of the little and big things cause her heart to nearly come out of her chest in that moment, but he must see it, because not even a moment has passed before Bash wraps around her from behind, and whispers into her ear, _this is it, Luce, you see? You and me_.

Everything seems a bit less important, a bit more possible, after that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I really wanted to highlight what I think the reality of the Weasleys and Potters would be after the war. I think too often we gloss over the aftermath and skip straight to some happy ending that might never have happened. I really wanted to try and explore how people can still be 'broken' after so long and what that does to those around them.
> 
> This is also in the works of a larger collection/universe that I have on other Next Gen characters (and possibly, later on, a part 2 for Lucy). But, as of now, it's complete and I hope you enjoyed!


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